


it's new (the shape of your body)

by wintervoice



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, aka the most inspirational album of 2019 apparently, based on taylor swift's lover, rp inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 11:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21355687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintervoice/pseuds/wintervoice
Summary: i don't want to keep secrets just to keep you.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	it's new (the shape of your body)

It’s Armitage’s birthday. The guy’s a complete ass even three drinks deep, boasting loudly about his expected promotion at the end of the month to anyone who will listen. The bar’s crowded and the music is loud so he’s able to slip away to sit at the end of the bar just in time for his phone to ping to notify he has a text. 

It’s Snoke (it’s always Snoke) with a quick, sharp reminder that he’ll never be head of the department if he doesn’t socialize with his colleagues. A single line is all he needs to make Ben’s skin crawl and swipe left to delete the notification. 

He glances up at said colleagues to find they are beginning to sing along to Queen’s_ Crazy Little Thing Called Love_ and...there’s a girl smiling at him.

Probably not at him. _Definitely_ not at him considering it hadn’t lasted any longer than the split second they’d locked gazes and she’d rolled her eyes in a good-natured sort of way as if to say _You know those clowns?_ By the time he glances over his shoulder to see if the gesture is maybe aimed at someone behind him, she’s disappeared into the crowd. 

Ben’s tall, so he can peer over pretty much everyone in search of the stranger. He has to wait a beat or two before he tries so as not to look like a creep. He doesn’t find her again until she’s flopping onto a chair in the corner and laughing at something her friend has said.

He shakes the strange encounter off and looks down at his phone again, thumbing open the kindle app with a disgruntled sigh. The rest of the staff are ignoring him completely and he can’t say he’s disappointed. He might as well indulge in some light reading until an appropriate amount of time has passed and he can leave. 

“What are you reading?”

He almost jumps at the sudden intrusion of the voice next to his shoulder. It’s got an odd lilt to it that lends to some kind of accent — English, maybe, but worn down by years spent in the US — and belongs to the smiling girl. She’s got a coke in her hand and is chewing on the edge of the plastic cup while she waits for another drink. And she’s expecting an answer.

“Nathaniel Hawthorne,” he answers honestly. Mostly because he’s a little caught off guard. 

“Are you some kind of masochist? Who reads Hawthorne for fun?” She leans in closer, hair brushing against his arm, and begins reading the passage. “_By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love, with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they had even spoken love, in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath, like tongues of long-hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress, such as love claims and hallows._”

She reads the whole paragraph like that. Out loud. With a Fleetwood Mac song blaring on the speakers and a dozen people chattering loudly on either side of them. In the time it takes, the bartender puts her drink on the counter and Ben’s lungs no longer function. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. 

And just like that, she disappears again, drifting into the crowd with another soda (no rum). The only difference is, Ben follows her this time.

The friend’s name is Rose and she’s celebrating turning an internship into a permanent job. She’s also completely engrossed in her boyfriend, Finn, Rey’s...not brother, but might as well be. The two of them barely look up when he approaches. They don’t really notice when he sits down next to Rey at her invitation. 

To be fair, Ben doesn’t really care that they’re there. He’s too wrapped up in the way Rey laughs with her head thrown back and her shoulders shaking. They’re real, deep, from the belly laughs that he’s not sure he’s ever experienced. 

And he finds he wants to be the one to make her laugh.

Finn and Rose leave about forty minutes later. Ben and Rey are deep in a debate about whether or not the McRib should even be called food. 

(“It’s not even real meat.”

“So? It’s delicious.”)

It’s only after they stumble out onto the sidewalk that Rey appears to remember her apartment is miles away from downtown and she doesn’t have money for a Lyft until her next paycheck. 

She huffs and scrolls through her very small contact directory while he stands with his arms crossed and stares at the traffic lights. Something nags at him (maybe it’s the fact that when she brushes up against him as she stuffs her phone back into the pocket of her pocket, he finds his mind softening and his cock hardening in his jeans) that he’d be stupid if he didn’t at least _try_ to make the night last a little longer.

So he says, as casually as he can manage, “I rent a place on Cornelia Street. That’s just a block from here.”

The door is barely closed when her shirt comes off and his belt slides free. He has to break away to pace himself because...well, it’s been a while and he’s a little out of practice. His two most significant relationships were Kaydel Connix and Poe Dameron and for some reason, he can’t stop thinking about those breakups and the way they’d both accused him of being too apathetic during sex. 

Rey, however, seems to think he’s anything but with the way she groans and grips his hair as presses a line of open-mouthed kisses down her neck and along the curve of her collarbone. 

“Bedroom,” she commands when she feels him smiling against her skin, and he is more than happy to obey. 

The sex is great (Ben, unfortunately, comes first and makes up for it by hitching one slim, tanned leg over his shoulder and tracing the letters of the alphabet at the apex of her thighs until she’s quivering) but she leaves almost immediately after. It’s better that way considering neither of them know how to initiate any kind of aftercare. He calls her a ride and walks her to the door, where they exchange numbers and one last kiss that borders on awkward. 

He agonizes over reaching out for hours afterward. Days. Almost a full week. And then a single text arrives the next Friday. 

_Tell me you have HBO. _

The Game of Thrones finale is likely one of the most popular and controversial events of the summer but Ben can’t be bothered to care about ridiculous plot points when Rey is straddling him on the couch. There’s a litany of little pants as she adjusts to his size (“You’re too bi — _ah!_ No, no, don’t _stop_!”) that drive him closer to the edge. He slides one hand beneath her shirt, large hand settling over her protruding ribs, and tries to think of something, anything other than the friction of her rocking back and forth so as to make it last as long as possible. The other thumb rubs against her until her muscles contract and she’s pulling him into pleasure with her, their bodies working together toward completion. 

She leaves again, this time after the finale is over and they’ve both lamented the destruction of one of the greatest female fictional characters of all time, but he texts before she’s even in the Lyft. 

_Seen Stranger Things? _

The rewatch is agonizingly slow, the initial viewing of season three even slower, mostly because they only make it a couple of episodes before one of them gets handsy again. It’s the kind of sex that’s all laughs when they’re not moaning (the same type of deep, whole-body laughs that he now experiences with her) and now she lingers when it’s over. Sleeps in his bed. Eats the leftover pizza in his fridge. Wears one of his plain back t-shirts while she does laundry in his washing machine.

When she does leave it’s to go to the corner shop for a restock of M&Ms and condoms and he’s holding her hand. 

It feels very middle school but it also feels _nice_. She doesn’t complain when he offers a gentle squeeze as they head into the elevator. In fact, she squeezes back. 

Here’s what Ben knows about Rey:

She’s twenty-two and used to build robots in her bedroom as a kid. 

(“Robots?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

He extends his hands in surrender. “I’m not judging.”

“Yes, you are,” he thinks he hears her mumble _asshole_ half-heartedly. 

“It sounds like the origin story of a comic book villain is all.”)

She eats instant noodles as if there’s an impending threat of a worldwide shortage. Her favorite color is yellow - _no, blue - no...wait, I know. Green._ She watches cheesy Hallmark movies because she likes happy endings. She laughs almost every time they kiss. There’s a spot on her neck just below the shell of her ear that makes her entire body melt into his own. She uses ivory soap and sleeps sprawled out on her back.

Here’s what Rey knows about Ben:

He’ll be thirty at the end of the year.

(“Oof. Rough. Born on Christmas Day.” She’d said at the bar when he’d told her that first night in the bar. She had stopped chewing on the cup focused on the leftover ice and he was so mesmerized by the way her tongue chased it around her mouth that he could hear his own heartbeat reverberating in his ears. “Did your parents always combine Christmas and your birthday?”

“Birthday and Hannukah, usually,” he’d clarified. )

He likes _real_ ramen. He takes his coffee black, survives on a mostly pescatarian diet save for the occasional burger, works out five days a week, and has a stack of books beside his bed that, when she begins to pick through them, elicits a fake snore to imply he’s boring for the lack of fiction. 

Here is what both of them fail to mention over the course of their three month..._thing_:

Ben Solo is a T.A. for Introduction to Philosophy and Critical Thinking. It’s a 10 am class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and comes with more assigned reading than any other intro class offered at the university. 

Rey Johnson is an engineering major who has yet to take some basic gen eds due to a busy work schedule.

Her Intro to Philosophy and Critical Thinking class is on Tuesday at 10 am.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Rose — he thinks her name is Rose but that night at the bar was _months_ ago — is whispering to a very pale-faced Rey in the third row of his class. There’s a strange whooshing sound in his ears as if his head is being held underwater. His portfolio drops out of his grasp and his meticulously kept papers scatter across the floor of the lecture hall. It isn’t until a student begins picking them up that he realizes he hasn’t moved in a full sixty seconds. 

“Right._ Uh..._” He accepts the pile of syllabi with shaking hands. He breathes, clears his throat, and finds the strength to begin passing out copies of the expected coursework. “Welcome. This class will explore classical and contemporary writings. We’ll begin with the nature of truth. Open your books to page twenty-six.” 


End file.
